


The Process Of Finding Balance

by YesBothWays



Series: The Body's Intelligence Could Rival The Mind's [10]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Non-Monogamy, Shower Sex, somatic sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Delphine travels to Europe alone for nearly a month, she comes home to Cosima.  Delphine feels some new and difficult feelings regarding Cosima's relationship with Shay, even as Cosima's excitement over her return disrupts Cosima's relationship with Shay.  Delphine and Shay get closer to one another in response.  (In scene, there is Cophine sex and not Shaysima sex in this story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Process Of Finding Balance

            Delphine sat with a coffee and a croissant at a little café just across the street from her hotel in Paris. She awoke that morning to a string of calls that led to a series of cancellations. She finally realized it all meant that her tour of presentations had just ended, five days earlier than expected. She felt that she did not know what to do with herself now. Her ambivalence settled into her as she walked down the staircase, out onto the street, and found herself in the café. She felt that she wanted to simply rush home, but she felt hesitant in some deeply rooted way.

            Delphine tried for a few minutes to send an email to Cosima. She was not sure what to say or ask. So she just said that the last round of lectures was canceled and that she was thinking of coming home early and left it at that. As she sat back from her laptop, she nearly sighed in relief. She was not sure what kind of response she expected or why it was difficult to write to Cosima.

            She ran her hands through her hair, she felt an edge of how exhausted she really was. This trip had been entirely draining and not at all reinvigorating, and she was ready to go home. Her eyes felt a bit dry and unable to focus very well at a distance, simply from all the concentration in close rooms and reading she had been doing of late. Her body felt almost like paper or some other work instrument itself. She did not particularly like the feeling, although she honestly expected that the work haze was making her time of having returned France feel less emotional that it might have otherwise.

            When Dyad had planned this trip, Delphine and Cosima agreed to go and present their findings from the Remington project together in a series of presentations and lectures. As the months to the scheduled time passed, however, more and more reasons for Cosima to remain home piled up on them. They already knew that Shay would finish her degree program during the month the trip would take them. After being worn down for two years, Shay seemed somewhat fragile. She was extremely devoted to her work still and excited to get her degree in Somatic Therapy as she wanted to begin a new career. Donnie had a minor surgery on a tendon in his knee scheduled that would need recovery time afterwards, and Allison needed more support than usual. Helena's daughter, Maggie, was just starting to walk. Felix began to get into a serious relationship with a man named Tommy and wanted to talk it all out with Cosima fairly often. Sarah and Kira moved out of living with Cal and back in with Siobhan, and they were all trying to make sure Kira did not feel stressed by it all. When Scott got a girlfriend named Megan, whom Cosima described as the cutest former Goth nerd turned lawyer on the planet, and started to become a crisis of feelings and anxieties around the lab, Delphine could tell Cosima was feeling pressured to stay. He would have been expected to head the lab while they were both away. And soon, it became clear that Dyad did not want to let them both go for an entire month. They thought the collection of labs that they managed might essentially fall apart.

            So Delphine eventually coaxed Cosima to decide to stay. And after more than three weeks of occasional, sleepy video chats during which Delphine tried to give only very brief accounts of the idiotic questions posed by their supposed peers throughout the broader web of Dyad laboratories, and Cosima tried to cheer her up afterwards with reports about everyone at home and abundant and cavalier flirting, Delphine was more than ready to be home again. She felt a bit reluctant, however, to show up early and interfere with Cosima's "Shay-cation," as she jokingly called it before Delphine left.

Cosima responded to her email almost immediately. She must have been keeping a close eye on her phone with Delphine away. Her email just said, _"_ COME HOME TO ME". That was all. Delphine did not notice that it had arrived for a five minutes, and Cosima had already sent her another email just saying, "ARE YOU COMING?" Delphine smiled at this. She wrote to say that she would catch the next flight she could get that day, and Cosima responded with an email that consisted only the word yes and an extremely long line of exclamation points. Delphine laughed out loud in the cafe. She sat back and finished her breakfast and tried not to think too much for a little while. She felt her own heart almost lurch like the sudden stopping of a train at the vaguest idea of getting home to Cosima.

            Delphine got herself set up with a slightly indirect but immediate series of flights. She found that something about the cold on the plane, as it made its way across the Atlantic, made her feel sad. She noticed that her own hand came to her side, where her gunshot wound had been. She thought that Shay would say this was a somatic cue and that somehow her sadness had to do with her life surrounding those events. She did not know what that meant in any deeper way. She decided that she would have a couple of drinks and try to go to sleep. She found it strangely easy to fall asleep and awoke during their descent with a bit of a stiff neck.

            The connecting flight proved to be a headache. Delphine called Cosima while she waited to give her an update. Cosima seemed reluctant to get off the phone. Delphine did not know what time yet to tell her she would be in, though she had an approximate window. Cosima had planned to take Shay out dancing with some of Shay's friends to celebrate her getting her degree. She seemed to want to bail out on the plan now and get to the airport, but Delphine told her to just stay the course. She promised finally that she would take a taxi to the bar if she got in before it closed. Cosima was taking Shay home, so she would be the one person of their group left sober.

            "Look, if I get lucky, I'll just come meet you there. Otherwise, I will meet you at home," Delphine said. Cosima gave a dejected sound, but she did not disagree. So Delphine knew that she'd won out. Cosima simply needed to vent her frustration at what meant missing less than an hour of seeing Delphine. This made Delphine smile and grow just slightly abashed.

            "Okay?" Delphine said to get her to confirm.

            "Yes, I guess," Cosima said.

            "I will be there tonight," Delphine said.

            "Yeah, okay. I'm cool," Cosima said, "I'm excited." Her tone seemed almost serious with the severity of her excitement. Delphine felt herself grinning in response as she said goodbye for now.

            "See you soon," Cosima said, and Delphine could hear that she was smiling.

            On the last leg of her flight, Delphine drank some wine and then slept through most of it. When she woke up this time, Delphine felt wide awake and found that her body almost hurt with anticipation. She felt surprised but relieved by how much she had slept during her trip home. She could stay awake longer with Cosima now. She stared out the window at the sudden appearance of city lights when the clouds would clear and wondered why she was not able to feel more at ease with how badly she wanted to be home in this moment. She felt as if she could cry if she though over it too much. She remembered then what it felt like on the train home from boarding school as a girl, when she was too young to really watch the clock and fully understand the distance remaining on the journey, especially that first year when she was without Lyra. She sat back and let that realization of this sort of wash through her, then felt more calm and peaceful afterwards. She felt her nearness tears fade away.  

Delphine caught a taxi from the airport. She did not bother to text or call Cosima, as she assumed that she would be in a loud bar and dancing at that point. She came through the other side of customs earlier than she had thought. When the reached the bar, Delphine dug around in her bag and found the keys to their car, as the driver ran her card. She went around the parking lot and hit the unlock to find it and went and put her bags in the trunk.

            She nearly hesitated outside the door of the bar. She considered smoking for half a moment, but she had left almost everything in the car. After a pause of only a few seconds to hesitate, she felt slightly insane for imagining that she could wait another moment to go inside and find Cosima. She'd be lucky if she did not drag her out into the alley as soon as she found her inside.

            Delphine tried not to feel shy when the bouncer called her sweetie. She gave her a slight smile. She found the bar slightly crowded, and she pressed through a clutter of women grouped around standing tables to get to narrow clear space behind the bar. She glanced all through the bar and leaned into an opening to order a glass of bourbon. She spotted Shay through a clearing onto the dance floor. And she felt her own heart pounding already at the mere idea of seeing Cosima. She leaned out with her hand still on the edge of the bar.

            A few people cleared away, and Delphine got an opening for her line of sight then. For a long moment, Delphine could not see anything except Cosima. She was wearing a purple dress and tights and her favorite pair of boots. Delphine could tell just from how she moved her body that they'd been dancing for a long time, and she could tell that Cosima was not drunk, just happy. She seemed incredibly happy in some deep way. The feel of it moved along with her body. Delphine felt herself almost gasp in a breath. She must have been holding it for a minute.

            Delphine watched Cosima and Shay dance together. She could tell they were surrounded by a group of Shay's friends, even though she did not know them. They were dancing all together in some subtle way, and yet Cosima and Shay still appeared as a clear couple of some sort in the mix. Delphine watched more closely to see how they moved into each other and away again. Somehow, it felt different than how everyone else moved when they were close together. Most of it felt beneath mere observation. Cosima would put her hand to Shay's hip or dip in close to her, but it seemed like something more between them, some grace or ease in how they moved together. Delphine felt completed distracted with watching for a long moment. She felt her heart pounding even harder now. She felt almost abashed by having watched them.

            As Delphine gathered her drink from the bartender, she turned back and tried to work herself up to walking out to get Cosima and Shay's attention. Cosima turned and spotted Delphine quite suddenly. Cosima's whole body just went still for a moment. Delphine just grinned at her. Cosima put her hands up to her temples for a second. Without a word to anyone, Cosima made a bee-line across the dance floor and over the rest of the bar. She had her arms around Delphine then and was laughing into her ear.

            Delphine grew almost lost in herself at the sound. She felt that she nearly cried, and she breathed in the scent of Cosima's skin. She felt hot from their dancing. Cosima leaned back just enough to get her hands on Delphine's face and dragged her into a long series of kisses that came on so passionately that Delphine actually forgot where they were for long a moment. She kissed Cosima in return without any self-consciousness. Cosima sort of threw herself onto her shoulder again afterwards.

            When Delphine stood back too look at her, she got shy after just a moment about them kissing like this in a public bar. Delphine saw Shay standing at the bar with a grin on her face, trying not to look at the two of them. Shay leaned her back into the bar, and Delphine could see that Shay was quite drunk. She remembered that she was holding her own drink and had probably spilled some already. She finished it quickly and put the glass on the bar. Cosima did not really let her go, as Delphine managed this and turned back towards her.

            After Delphine and Cosima managed to step back a bit, Delphine leaned in to kiss Shay. She was a bit too drunk to adapt and Delphine's second kiss landed halfway on her lips. Shay gave a sort of wave of her hand in a casual dismissal and apology. As she stood back fully, Delphine happened to notice that one of Shay's friends looked a bit jealous. Delphine looked away from her before she could notice that Delphine saw this.

            Cosima was pulling at her shirt front then. Delphine turned to her face, and she tried for about half a second not to forget everything else and start kissing her again. She only realized she had failed in her attempt after they stopped kissing. They couldn't stay here, Delphine realized. She wondered if Cosima would feel torn about whether to leave.

            Shay was leaning all the way over the bar to talk to the bartender. She just gave a wave of her arm and led them all out to the street a few minutes later. Cosima stood back and held Delphine's hand, as Shay said goodbye to everyone.

            "You're done in?" Cosima asked her. Shay gave Cosima a playful but forceful push in response. And Cosima started them in the direction of her push, towards the car, as Shay said final goodbyes to everyone over her shoulder.

            "You're done for," Shay joked, as she mirrored Cosima's tone and put her arm around Cosima's waist for a moment in a friendly gesture now. Cosima opened the door for Shay, and she lay herself across the back seats. Delphine got a look at her as she climbed in.

            "Cosima wrecked you," Delphine said, as she turned back to look at Shay.

            "Woah," Cosima said already. Delphine looked over at her. Cosima grinned at her in complete and obvious delight. "Your accent is _so strong_." Delphine gave her a smile at mild annoyance at this. She saw Cosima actually quell an urge to hit on her and shallow hard, as she checked her mirrors and got her seatbelt on. Delphine followed suit.

            "You need me to turn around and strap you in back there?" Delphine asked. Shay sat up and got herself in her seatbelt with exaggerated movements. Delphine watched her and laughed.

            "I'll be fine once the pot wears off," Shay said. She braced her hands on the backseats to keep upright during the drive. Delphine reached back to touch her shoulder.

            "Congratulations," Delphine said. Shay rubbed at her hand hard and smiled at her. She seemed even more tender than usual in this moment.

            "We missed the hell out of you," Shay said. She reached up and squeezed Delphine's shoulder. She seemed more Midwestern somehow when she was drunk, a bit less shy and more openly friendly.   They rode towards Shay's apartment joking and making some small talk.

            "Who was your tall friend with the dark hair?" Delphine asked.

            "Kate," Cosima said.

            "She likes you, you think?" Delphine asked her in a casual, inquiring tone.

            "Just not me," Cosima said. Shay leaned forward a bit as if to intervene, Delphine thought. Delphine glanced over both of them.

            "We had a little bit of a thing," Shay said. Delphine could tell that Shay and Cosima did not quite agree on the story and also that Cosima deferred to Shay. Delphine turned to look back at Shay. "But she doesn't like my relationship with Cosima. She thinks it means that I'd cheat on her if the two of us ever got together. We're pretty good friends still, though." She seemed very mild about the whole thing. Cosima kept a neutral face, but Delphine could tell that she didn't like this.

            "Which works out overly well for me," Cosima said.

            Cosima's tone seemed disappointed for Shay, Delphine thought. This was the first that Delphine had heard of all this. She wondered if it had all played out while she was away. But she could have been distracted in the weeks before. Delphine thought that Shay's face seemed a bit pained, as she seemed to concentrate hard through the haze of her drunkenness for a moment. Cosima reached back to hold her hand for just a moment, and Shay smiled.

            Shay refused to let Cosima come up to help her get herself together before bed. She made promises about water and backed Cosima off when she finally explained a rather meticulous vitamin and juice regiment that she had pre-planned. This made Delphine laugh softly. They gave each other a sort of tumbling, rough hug there on the sidewalk. Shay opened Delphine's door, and she got out to give Shay a real hug. Shay eyed the two of them for one moment, as she began to walk away, and gave them a sort of knowing grin and a performative wave over her shoulder, as she went up to her door. They got in and waited until they saw her lights clicking on before they drove away.

            Cosima leaned over and pulled Delphine into another kiss. Alone now, Delphine felt even more lost in their kiss. She had forgotten somehow, the taste, the exact feel of it, in only a few weeks. Maybe it was something one could not hold in one's mind, simply too much. When Cosima forced herself to pull away, she almost punched in a series of taps the steering wheel. She pressed herself back into the seat.

            "Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes," Cosima chanted to herself, "Just be cool." She took in a deep, dramatic breath and let it out "You're luck I'm still just a little bit high and mellow right now, or else I'd pull us into an alleyway and just take you right here in the car," Cosima claimed, as she got her belt on and started the car like she was bolstering herself to take them on a serious mission. Delphine laughed.

            As they got going, Cosima focused on her driving. She pushed her glasses up in concentration. She glanced over at Delphine and seemed to conscientiously grow more serious for the trip home.

            "You seem pretty awake. How tired are you?" Cosima asked her.

            "Not very," Delphine said. "I slept a lot on the way in."

            "During your flights?" Cosima asked. She sounded both impressed and obviously delighted. Delphine said yes. "Awesome," Cosima said. She pushed her glasses up into place again and straightened herself in the seat. Delphine smiled and looked out her own window, as she realized what Cosima got eager. Delphine knew what she was thinking. She was already planning to keep Delphine up late.

            Delphine's own body felt ecstatic and also a bit in shock. Underneath this, though, she felt a heavy and almost painful ache of longing herself. Part of it might come from being grounded after so long in the air, but she suspected it was simply sitting here beside Cosima. She could practically feel the presence of her body within her own.

            They chatted only a bit as they made it the rest of the way home. Cosima got Delphine's suitcase out of the trunk, as Delphine grabbed her bag. Delphine saw Cosima consciously check her own instinct to lean in and kiss her in order to get them inside before she did. Cosima put the suitcase on the couch, as Delphine closed the door and turned the lock. She felt a bit of a rush of relief move through her upon entering her own house.

            "Are you hungry?" Cosima asked.

            Delphine could not really tell whether she was or not. She wanted to walk over and drag Cosima right up against herself. Delphine must have hesitated for a moment. Cosima came over and stepped in close to her and put her arms around her neck again. She ended up pushing Delphine into the closed door, so she could come down lower as they kissed. Delphine nearly let her body just sink to the floor, but she felt hesitant.

            "I want to shower," Delphine managed to say in between their kisses, after a while. She tried to get it out before they had sex right there on the living room floor, maybe the couch if they could even manage to get that far. Her own resolve felt frail already.

            "Mm-k," Cosima managed to get herself to say. She had already started pulling at Delphine's clothes and just kept going, as she knelt down in front of her. Delphine placed her hands on Cosima's hair and almost felt faint at the vivid, familiar feel of it under her hands. Cosima led them in small stages towards the stairwell, as she stopped and seemed to calmly wrestle Delphine's clothes and her own away in order to get to her. By the time they made it all the way upstairs and Cosima flicked on the bathroom lights, they were barely still dressed at all.

            Cosima got the water on, then she undress Delphine the rest of the way. This was all slow going because of their kissing, and Delphine felt how strange time felt when Cosima touched her body. She could not decipher between moments and minutes as they passed.   Cosima let her go, so they could get into the shower. Cosima forget to take off her glasses and pulled them off. She ducked out of the curtain to put them on the sink. She seemed to take in Delphine's body then for a moment. She held out her hands, as if sizing her up for just moment.

            "My mind is completely blown in this moment," Cosima said.

            Delphine tried to hurry and get herself clean. She got soap on her body. Cosima knelt down in front of her and kissed her stomach. Delphine felt her touch the scar on her side. Cosima ran her hands over Delphine's stomach and legs, as she moved the soap over her body. Delphine had to concentrate to keep her legs from becoming too weak.

            Delphine got some shampoo in her hair. She felt better already as if she were washing the bottled air from the plane off of her. Cosima kissed her throat as she tipped her heard back to rinse her hair. Cosima was smart enough to put one hand to the far wall and brace Delphine's back as she did this, otherwise she may have unbalanced her.

            Delphine turned forward and kissed her more as the water came down the sides of her face. She tried to get herself to let go and reach for the conditioner. She realized then that it had been a while since she first had the idea. Still, they kept on kissing. She could not really concentrate. Delphine kept pressing her hands to the wall and merely standing there and feeling Cosima's touch on her skin.

            "We will never get out of here if you don't stop distracting me," Delphine managed to say, before Cosima drew her close and was kissing her again. Cosima bolstered herself at the promise of getting out and turned and handed Delphine the conditioner. She got herself some soap, then, to get clean after dancing. They finally got themselves all rinsed and realized they were done.

            When the water went off, Cosima took them and their ongoing drying charade into the bedroom. They laughed at how ridiculous all of it became, as they tried to dry themselves and each other but were too reluctant to stop kissing for long. They finally just gave up. Cosima climbed into bed with Delphine. They dragged one another in close and kissed without any distractions now. Delphine felt herself almost drugged by the feel of Cosima against herself. She could not hold a single thought in her mind save what was happening in this moment. Cosima finally let go her lips long enough to kiss her shoulder and then over more of her body.

            Delphine gasped involuntarily when Cosima brought her hand up the inside of her thigh and pressed gently in between her legs. She felt herself almost too sensitive to tolerate the touch for a moment as she became used to the feel of it. Cosima came up alongside of her and propped herself on her elbow in order to look at Delphine's expression and figure out what she needed in this moment. She had heard the edge in her voice, as she became nearly overwhelmed. Cosima looked down over Delphine's body. Delphine realized then that her body was quaking, as Cosima ran her hand over her to feel it more intimately. She seemed to intuitively understand.

            Cosima knew Delphine so well that she eased back just enough to bring her down a bit only to then pushed her back up into almost a crisis of pleasure in only a few minutes. Delphine dragged Cosima overtop of herself eventually to embrace her fully. She felt that she could not stop moving her hands over Cosima's body, feeling its distinct shape, remembering just how it changed as she moved.

            When Cosima finally moved down to put her mouth on Delphine, Delphine felt herself rise up into a climax with almost embarrassing ease and quickness. She nearly dragged Cosima again over and moved herself onto her afterwards. They ended up in several strange positions in their bed, and it felt too urgent to reposition themselves. Delphine knew they left patches of water from their hair each time they moved, as she felt them under her hands or her back throughout the night. When finally they seemed to have exhausted themselves and lay quiet for a few moments, Cosima sat herself up with a groan of exertion. She corrected the pillows and then sort of pulled Delphine up beside her on the bed in their usual positions. They lay quietly together for a long while.

            They went down into the kitchen eventually and brought some food upstairs to eat, as they lay in bed, before they went to sleep. Delphine knew that she would crash hard and wake up late. She felt almost disappointed by the idea. Cosima was planning to cook breakfast and bring it up to bed. She wanted to talk more about the trip and hear some of the details in the morning, she said. Delphine guessed that she had no plans for them to actually get out of bed that day, and neither did she.

 

            They took a few days off from work, then the weekend came. They returned to the Dyad that Monday. The lab seemed relaxed, and the feeling that they were in between projects pervaded everything. Cosima had done a good job of keeping everyone calm while Delphine was away. Delphine felt the very first, slight edge of boredom. She knew that something new would come down the pipeline in short order. But these small, trivial projects were difficult for her to focus on and took a small exertion of will.

            After work, Cosima drove them home. Delphine kissed Cosima goodbye in front of their apartment. They shared a wave, as Cosima waited for Delphine to get inside. Cosima drove away to meet up with Shay. Delphine put her keys and her coat away and brought her bag with her into the kitchen. As she put on a cup of tea, she realized that she had no idea of what to do next.

            She rubbed at her eyes gently. She felt somehow uniquely aware of the steam that rose up when she poured the cup of tea. Her tongue already wanted to taste the strangely sweet bitterness from the steeped leaves. The idea made her think about smoking, and she went and got her pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her bag. She took them with the cup of tea up the fire escape to the roof and sat down on a black, wrought iron chair at a small table.

            Her hands and mind felt idle without a notebook or a computer there in front of her on the table. Delphine felt a strain like sadness in her own expression that made her gain some self-awareness. She rubbed a bit at her face. She actually wished that the Remington project were not over. Somehow, she felt shaped to it, and now that it was over, she did not match as well with her own life.

            She felt her shoulders shift a bit hard, as if to shrug off a faint shame that passed through her. Often, and always quite gently, Cosima would tease her about being stuck in "work mode." Cosima contrasted this with "life mode," although Delphine would contrast it with "play mode." At times, Cosima would actually seem distressed that she couldn't break Delphine out of her internal focus on her work. Sometimes, Cosima would just decide to give up and actually go there with her, since she could not get her any other way. During the Remington project, Cosima stayed up late with Delphine many nights just to work.

            Delphine thought it strange to regret the conclusion of their project, the dissemination of valuable new knowledge into the scientific community, at least throughout Dyad with a promise of widespread release in three years. That was the whole point of their work, the end purpose. This ought to feel like a moment of celebration and of hard-won rest and temporary ease. But it felt to her instead like being out of sync with one's own life, idle and waiting.

            Delphine realized that she felt alone in this moment. The feeling was uncommon to her life these last years. She felt an urge to reach for the phone in her pocket, which was not there, as she would have over her weeks away. She would glance at her phone to see if Cosima sent her a message about some matter at home. She was just at Shay's and would be back in a few hours. And Delphine did not know how to distract herself for that many hours anymore.

            The idea made her feel somewhat frail as a person. She sat and enjoyed her smoke. She held one wrist with her arms propped over her head. She closed her eyes or else looked out over their part of the city. She could see people coming in and out of a corner grocery, eating out on the sidewalk in front of a local bar, and driving slowly on the relatively narrow streets. She drank her cup of tea and enjoyed the taste created by the tobacco as it mixed with the taste of the tea and became a single, unique taste.

            She was surprised to feel both at home and lonely in the same moment. She thought of Cosima with Shay and felt a distinct twinge of jealousy low in her stomach. She smiled a bit at this, both amused and slightly uncomfortable with the feeling. She wanted to shrug it off and shifted her body as if to try and accomplish this.

            As she shifted in the chair, Delphine felt her own body changed by all the time they had spent in bed over the last several days. Probably, the feeling was mostly physical, but it also seemed to have reshaped her inner landscape, as well. She thought over the idea that perhaps her psyche wanted to be shaped by Cosima's presence. She did not really like as much how it felt when she spent too much time on her own.

            A flicker of the feel of France came over her, and it made her chest ache deeply now for different reasons. Cosima used to ask Delphine if she felt like an outsider or an exile away from France. She always said she preferred America to anywhere else. She felt that she fit better there than she did in France. And now, it seemed that all of France resonated with the echoes of a history she did not want to shape her current life, even if she could not help but cherish parts of it.

            Delphine knew that the years would never make her heart any less injured over Lyra, even though she recovered. One did not lose a sister and walk away unchanged. The pain of it felt like a part of her. It seemed to her in this moment that all of France – the language, the distinct tastes, and even the landscapes – reminded her that her sister was not there anymore. She could not fully understand something like this, so deeply felt and emotional. However, she suspected that no one could.

            She felt her jaw tighten as she wondered for just a moment where her mother was right now. She dismissed her own guesses and ideas about it before they could form fully. The concept that there was, in fact, one person who knew all of what she lost only made her feel worse. Their stories did not match to one another's. Instead, they conflicted. And Delphine would not contend for control over a story that would never change anything. She felt invested in other matters now, in places where she had at least some power.

            A whole series of thoughts seemed tangled up with these. She tapped the excess ash off her cigarette and tried to get a handle on some small part of all of it. Maybe she felt like she did not have as much power in her life now that their project had concluded. Delphine felt herself sigh deeply at this thought.

            Cosima appreciated this aspect of Delphine's temperament now, after so much conflict and suffering in their past together. But she did not relate to it, and probably she never would. When she decided to stay home from the lecture tour, Cosima just shifted her thoughts over to other matters. Delphine would probably have taken weeks to get over such a transition.

            She hoped that it would not take her weeks to get over this now. She simply needed time to think and process it all out, which she had now. And she needed something to occupy her mind. She did not have to think, did not have to reason, when she and Cosima were together in bed. That’s' where she preferred to be. There were only so many hours in the day.

            She felt like a bit of a miser towards Shay just now. The idea made her smile, even though it made her stomach ache with some form of unease, almost an anxiety. She did not want to unsettle things between the two of them or even just between herself and Shay. She ran her hand over her stomach to really feel it more, as Shay would have suggested, if she were here in this moment.

            Something about the feel of this made Delphine swallow hard and grow more emotional. She found herself filled with surprisingly vivid memories from her relationship with Cosima back at the very beginning. When Delphine met Cosima, she thought that her task of assessing how much she knew about project Leda and enticing her to come to work with the Dyad of her own accord would be easy. As she imagined them meeting each other now, she felt that she was already drawn into Cosima, as if she were an object pulled in by the gravity of something far larger than itself. She found that she hoped very quickly that they could remain friends when Cosima entered the Dyad, even if she eventually found out about Delphine was posing as a graduate student again in order to get her into the Dyad.

            Delphine suspected almost from the start that Cosima knew more than she let on. She seemed almost to play around with Leekie when they met him, as if it to show the strings animating the action in what he thought was a perfectly deceptive stage. Cosima never played at Delphine that way. Always, she seemed to draw her instead away from the set up playing out and deeper into science with her.

            Even through a carefully orchestrated and fine haze of wine to steady her nerves, Delphine felt an anxiety streak through her when Cosima seemed to be about to call her out on the entire set up she was acting out along with Leekie. Cosima stepped in close to Delphine instead, without another word spoken. For just a moment, Delphine forgot to think, and instead she watched as Cosima came into her. As she felt her lips and her own body practically jolt with a rise of energy at the feel of it, she finally reacted. Their entire relationship moved them towards this moment, and she saw it now, all at once, for what it had been all along.

            Delphine drew back and felt caught between a moment of sheer delight and a wall of anxiety that washed over her. She remembered how Cosima's face changed to one of shock, as she asked her, "What?" and then responded almost with a slight panic of withdraw to whatever she read in Delphine's expression. As Cosima asked her if she had made a huge mistake, Delphine almost touched Cosima, on an impulse to communicate her own desire after seeing Cosima's startled expression, then realized that she shouldn't. She had said no to herself aloud. She got so overwhelmed then that she just bolted. She realized as she left what Cosima would assume after a moment like this one and decided to go with it if she could get away with it that simply. She tried to pass it off as a mistake and hoped that she was convincing as she closed the door behind her.

            Delphine felt like she almost ran out onto the sidewalk. Cosima was too smart she knew, too smart to fall for this. Delphine both wanted Cosima to come out after her and felt deeply relieved when she did not. She made her way down the street to catch a taxi. Her situation flashed through her mind. This assignment should have been fairly simple. She meant to go in and offer the chance of a lifetime to a finishing graduate student. Cosima's passion for their field should have made it easy. There was no way for her to fail. The Dyad simply needed someone Cosima would let in close and not feel skeptical towards at the start. That was all. And Delphine had messed it all up somehow, she thought now. Somehow, she got mingled up with Cosima and transgressed a boundary with her as a subject almost right away.

            After she climbed into a cab, Delphine calmed down a bit. Against her own will, her mind moved to all the things she might have said in that moment. And it wanted to move on to consider all the things they might have done. She felt almost afraid to have these thoughts here in a public space. She was not sure who she thought would be watching or how they might notice. She wasn't feeling all that rational at the moment.

            When Delphine got to her hotel and climbed out of the taxi, she felt almost shaky. Up in her room, she got the shower going to warm it up and took off her dress. She stared at it on the bed for a moment, and it seemed almost imbued in her mind with the feel of Cosima's apartment. She felt as if someone else would be able to feel its presence there, as if someone might see that they had kissed.

            When she got came back into the bathroom, she felt the water. She stood to let it heat up a bit more before she stepped in, and she leaned into the sink as she did. She looked up at her own face and saw the same stoic, rational expression there in the mirror. She felt a bit bolstered a this. She stood all the way up to finish undressing herself. She avoided looking at the underwear she took off and piled them instead with her other clothes, gathered together on the counter to toss into her laundry bag.

            As she stepped into the shower, the moment she had just before of hiding her own clothes overcame her. This felt too much like a moment from her life as a girl, when she kept hiding from even herself, before she was a sexually empowered woman. So she steadied herself now by leaning her arm against the wall of the shower and reached down to feel. She closed her eyes at the feel of how incredibly wet she was even still. She knew somehow that this was unlike anything she had felt before. And she grew overwhelmed, put her face in her arm and just wept there in the shower without clarity over her reasons.

            She turned off her lights and climbed into the bed after her shower without dressing. She lay on her stomach and buried her head under the pillows and tried to fall asleep at once. Her mind was still racing, but she felt deeply tired anyway. As it settled down somewhat, she found herself unwillingly playing out a number of ways she might have responded to Cosima before and imagining what they might have done after. She just lay there, still and almost heavy, until she finally feel asleep.

            In the morning, when she was sober and rested, Delphine managed to reason her way through her current situation. She would not be held responsible for Cosima's feelings towards her, and she would get out of the situation quickly. She had just had her love affair with Aldus, and she thought perhaps that would make him less interested in keeping her near Cosima after she showed and interest in her sexually. Regardless, he did not like for interpersonal entanglements to put people in vulnerable situations when they could be avoided. Delphine met up with Aldus already confident that he would transfer the job to someone else.

            Instead, he gave her permission to pursue it further. The decision on his end felt reckless to Delphine, like overreaching. When she considered it more, she grew slightly suspicious that she really understood Aldus, even after working with him for so long. This felt to Delphine like a new kind of request. She processed it as best she could. He wanted her to get in close and get the information and use Cosima's feelings as an angle to accomplish the goal.   She felt that her goal had evolved too rapidly. She was supposed to bring a grad student and a subject into the lab. That was all. Cosima was making this very complicated, and Aldus was failing to respond. He underestimated Cosima. Delphine had initially expected someone naïve if brilliant. What she found instead was Cosima, and she did not really have words for her yet.

            Delphine had not told Aldus about her own feelings. And she felt certain that he had not guessed. Even she would not have guessed until right now. She did not know what she was going to do about all of this. Delphine knew that she would not sleep well that night. She felt too unsettled, too undecided. She stayed awake and drank some Scotch and smoked cigarettes on her hotel balcony until she made her throat a somewhat sore from all of it, as she tried to just consider what was what.

            Delphine felt sure that Cosima was playing both her angles. She felt certain that Cosima knew about the Dyad at least somewhat and wanted to be brought in to work there and probably to find out more. She imagined that Cosima actually felt offended by their attempts to manipulate her and that she tested Leekie more out of the affront he presented to her intelligence than anything else. She must have known that Delphine was a part of this somehow, but she seemed to understand Delphine anyway. After a lifetime of feeling out of alignment with the rest of the world and a person whose emotions often went unread and unrecognized, this seemed like an anomaly in Delphine's mind. Cosima sorted Delphine's contrived emotions from her real ones easily. She clearly wanted Delphine for a lover. Cosima really wanted her for herself, Delphine realized. The idea made her stomach tighten with desire and excitement, until it ached and made her anxious with it.

            Delphine decided she would play both angles, as well. Whatever the threat was that might affect Cosima, Delphine was guaranteed a place after this working on the resolution. So she would not undermine her attempts to satisfy what the Dyad wanted by bringing Cosima in to work with them. As far as a romance, she was covered by the situation, and she had some leverage with Leekie, whether personal or perhaps otherwise through Rachel, from their love affair, if for some reason he ever became threatening about all of this. She was used to dodging oversight and managing institutional constraints, and she had much more power now than she had as a younger woman.

            What kept her preoccupied that night was what she would say to Cosima. How did someone explain something like this? What would she say about what had happened before? Cosima had seemed deeply apologetic and then let Delphine bolt without must resistance at all. Somehow, Delphine felt certain, regardless of how she felt about it, Cosima would be cool about all this. She would just say something to her when she got to her place.

            She didn't know beforehand that it would come out as science and would have felt foolish about it, but Cosima got her immediately. Apparently, Cosima intuitively knew what all science-y meant. It meant that this was quite genuine, the real part of Delphine and not her role being orchestrated by Dyad.

            After they kissed again, after they touched, Delphine felt it had been almost like coming to a body of water after a lifetime of moving through a world in drought. Delphine had imagined that she knew everything there was to know about her own passion. She thought of sex as somewhat technical and compatibility as biological and chemical. She found herself attracted to skilled men, who knew enough about sex already. She noticed carefully, as she moved into a relationship with them, how she found their smell, their taste. That was the science of sex in Delphine's mind and all that there was to it. When she and Cosima touched, they had moved beyond this form of knowing immediately and into something else, like moving from a theory recorded on paper and into the cosmos. Nothing would have induced her to move away from pursuing Cosima afterwards, unless it were beyond her own power to decide.

            Delphine felt almost the same way now, she felt. She thought over what she used to imagine, when she thought of Cosima as being something like water that would pour through her own body. She always felt upset whenever she thought of herself as potentially feeling incomplete without someone else. She thought that this was thinking like a woman, in a way that would leave her at a disadvantage in her life. When she finally confessed this particular reluctance to Cosima, the idea clearly did not make any sense to her. Cosima had no idea what it would mean to be complete alone, and when she worded it like that, it did not entirely make sense to Delphine. Cosima got Delphine to lighten up about all this by saying that relationships were more like chemical reactions and then to laugh by comparing the two of them to the Briggs-Rauscher oscillating chemical reaction and going on to joke her way through most of their friends in combinations as various solutions with different properties. Cosima brought it up again later in a more serious mood and kindly told Delphine that she thought the idea was patriarchal bullshit posing as logic.  

            As she thought of it now, Delphine felt herself smile just a bit. She still felt uncomfortable in some deeply imbedded part of herself. The idea of Cosima bringing her into a balance like a proper mixture of solutions, however, seemed to resonate somewhat and hold some truth in it. She felt a new discomfort now as she thought that perhaps without Cosima, she got lost in her own mind, away from her body. And Cosima dragged her back immediately and almost forcefully with her presence.

            She wondered what Shay would have to say about this and thought she might consider Delphine's analogy true in a fairly literal sense. Perhaps she might find a way to ask Shay about this when they were together next. Shay had just finished a graduate degree in Somatic Psychology. Delphine remembered how relieved Shay seemed to be when she settled on a new future career. Cosima told her vicariously about some of what Shay talked about as she interpreted both combat-related PTSD and domestic, social traumas like being subject to homophobia through the same lens. Delphine felt certain that Shay felt more powerful as the days passed and she imagined a future for her own work, and she felt happy for her. The two of them did not talk, however, about much besides food, but luckily they were both so interested in this that they never ran out of things to say.

            Shay had started coming to their house to cook with Delphine. Conversation went in some new directions with all three of them there together. Still, a lot of Delphine's current knowledge about Shay came through Cosima. Delphine considered for the first time that she and Shay might have remained in some kind of touch while she was away. That would probably have been wise. She felt herself fairly estranged from Shay now, and she suspected that her discomfort with Cosima going over to Shay's was born in part or catalyzed by a felt sense of her own unknowing about their relationship. She really had no idea what it was like between them now or how her absence had affected either of them or reshaped their relationship.   She found it difficult not to come up with irrational ideas about how happy they had been together without her there, even though she had no real reason to think this.

            When Cosima came home, Delphine met her in the kitchen. Cosima seemed happy to see her and came to kiss her. Delphine leaned back into the counter, and Cosima sat herself up on a stool nearby, as they chatted.

            "How was Shay?" Delphine asked.

            "Good. Better slept than I've seen in months," Cosima said.

            "Did you sleep together?" Delphine asked on a sort of impulse. She nearly started at her own question. She saw that Cosima was surprised that she asked.

            "Nope," Cosima said. "Why?" Cosima smiled at Delphine in a very clear flirtation. Delphine had to quell and urge to follow her up on this and pretend this was entirely why she asked. Cosima saw a more complex response play out and hopped down off of her stool and came over.

            "Sorry to pry," Delphine said, as she felt a bit coy and unskillful. She wanted them to talk more about this, but it came up odd and a bit early. She was not sure what to say now.

            "You're not prying," Cosima said. "You can't pry into an open book." Her face held a casual smirk.

            "Are you two doing okay?" Delphine asked her just a bit concerned now.

            "Yeah, we are. I'm kind of… saving my strength, just a little bit…" Cosima said. She pulled Delphine away from the counter by her hips and against herself gently, as she said this. "And feeling… just… entirely distracted."

            Delphine wished that she did not feel better upon hearing this. She did, though, and Cosima's far from subtle seduction was already getting the best of her. Cosima noticed something again that caught her attention in Delphine's mood. She kept herself a bit in check and leaned back to see Delphine's face.

            "You okay?" Cosima asked curiously. She read over Delphine's face. "You want me to take a break from sleeping with Shay?" Delphine looked up at her surprised. "We could talk it over. She and I could still hang out. It wouldn't be weird." Delphine shook her head a bit.

            "I think that I am just feeling a bit far from Shay," Delphine said.

            "That makes sense," Cosima said. She seemed to think over this for a moment. Her seriousness faded in and out pretty quickly. Cosima kissed her once, and then she stepped back away from her for a moment.

            Delphine caught something off Cosima. She realized that she had felt the same sort of energy from her in the club. Cosima was quelling an urge, she thought, but not an urge to be secretive. She seemed to want to draw Delphine more into her relationship with Shay. Her resistance felt more out of habit than anything. Delphine wondered if she were reading this right, but she was almost always right with Cosima. She never really knew what to think about Shay, until Shay told her or explained herself through Cosima. She wondered what she felt about this.

            Cosima went and got herself a glass of water from the sink, and Delphine noticed how large the glass was that she chose. Delphine got the distinct impression that Cosima had dropped the conversation in order to pick up the thread later. She was planning to get Delphine upstairs in short order and probably for the rest of tonight. Whatever Delphine felt worried about was clearly not what was really happening. She just needed some time to get herself up to speed. Delphine stood up from the counter, and when their eyes met, Cosima was already grinning at her.

 

            Delphine got a text from Shay later that night that she noticed just before she went to sleep. Shay asked her if she wanted to come to her house to make dinner together that Thursday. Shay already knew that Cosima was going to have dinner with the rest of the Clone Club. Delphine had thought that she might go along with her, but she did not actually like being with that many people all together, even if she loved them all. Shay had never invited Delphine to her house before this. And Delphine wondered if she were sharing some of the same feelings of ambivalence and distance with Delphine or perhaps just having similar instincts to draw her closer.

            So Delphine agreed and asked what type of wine and what else she could bring. She texted after she got her answer to double check about them breaking their old rules. Shay just texted back, "New era," and left it simply at that. Delphine smiled a bit at this. She was looking forward to it really and for more reasons than one.

Shay led Delphine into her apartment when she arrived with no hesitation. Delphine almost felt relieved that she did not make any jokes. Shay kissed Delphine, as well, as Delphine came and leaned down and kissed her cheeks. Delphine brought Shay a bottle of wine to celebrate her graduation along with the one she brought for the two of them to drink. Shay had started cooking before she got there and said she was enjoying doing it all slowly. She had a lot of time on her hands for a while, until she found a job. She was in no rush for the first time in a long time.

            Delphine poured them glasses of wine and just stood back to let her finish. Shay added some of their wine as a finishing touch to a red sauce she was making that was full of vegetables. She was boiling water for some fresh pasta. She put together a simple but fairly large salad to go alongside these.

            They talked about Shay finishing her program for a bit. She looked relaxed to Delphine, who could remember her more tired and perhaps held a bit more rigid from before she left. Many of Shay's friends from her program were staying in the area afterwards, but a few were moving away to work or family. Delphine remembered some of Shay's friends from the bar, and she thought of the one who looked jealous when Delphine kissed her. When they seemed settled in a bit, Delphine decided to ask her about Kate.

            "So what is the story with your friend, Kate?" Delphine asked. Her tone came curious and indicated that she wanted to see if Shay were interested in discussing the matter with her. Shay gave a slight smile.

            "We kissed at one point, a few months back. I wanted to see if she wanted to maybe be girlfriends," Shay said.

            "She wasn't interested," Delphine said. She was clearly surprised.

            "Yeah, she was," Shay said. "We're pretty close. I talked to her about Cosima," Shay said. Shay looked a bit unhappy to Delphine. "She said that she didn't want to be with anyone who had been involved in a relationship that wasn't monogamous before."

            "You think you would have broken it off with Cosima to be with her?" Delphine asked.

            "Yeah," Shay said. "I offered that actually. I think that would've been fair. We talked. She was cool with whatever happened." From her tone, Delphine knew that Shay meant Cosima this time.

            "She did not trust you?" Delphine asked, meaning Kate.

            "Yeah, it seemed pretty deep-seated, her resistance," Shay said. "Cosima thought it was kind of shitty of her not to take my word." She smiled softly.

            "You don't, though?" Delphine asked her. She could tell already that Shay did not agree with Cosima. She just wasn't sure about why yet.

            "No, not really," Shay said. "I think that's fair for her to decide what she doesn't want. Cosima thinks it's based on some external principle or whatever," Shay said. "And maybe it is. But also her dad cheated a lot, and her parents never actually separated over it. They just fought all the time. Everyone should have their limits respected, and they can't always really set those themselves." Shay gave a heavy shrug and looked at Delphine. "We're still good friends. And I can hardly complain." Shay smiled softly, and Delphine smiled back in response.

            "That does seem fair to me," Delphine said. "Still, I'm sorry to hear you could not at least try to work through it with her, if you wanted a relationship. And I can see why Cosima wouldn't like it." Shay smiled a bit and seemed to be considering whether to say her next thought. Delphine waited for a moment to see if she would.

            "Yeah," Shay said. "I told her that not everyone shares her degree of tolerance for reticent blondes with ambiguous histories that unfold in ways that feel jarring early on in relationships." Delphine laughed hard at this. She could tell that Shay was pleased. "Sorry," Shay said to her mildly, as if it were rude to compare the two of them, even for a joke.

            "What did Cosima say to that?" Delphine asked.

            "She said something about how people should be open-minded, and she got a lot in life that other people would want by taking people as they are," Shay said. "And she think that Kate needs to smoke."

            "Maybe that is why she's a scientist and not a therapist," Delphine joked. Shay gave a shrug. She seemed very amused as she remembered their conversations.

            "Well… I'm not saying she's wrong. I just wouldn't be the person to say. It's Kate's deal. We all deal with stuff in our own time and our own way," Shay said.

            "Or else we don't," Delphine said. Shay made a soft sound at this comment. She may have been thinking about Kate or about anyone.

            "Or else we don’t," Shay repeated after her in agreement. "Cosima is still cool with Kate, though, when we all hang out. I got worried for like a second there. She really is super accepting of people, so I can't give her a hard time. It's a great character strength she has. She just takes Kate as she is, you know?" Delphine nodded in understanding at this. "I'm not honestly sure whether she particularly likes her, but you can't tell. The scale is like different with Cosima. I don't know if Cosima can really relate personally to this kind of thing"

            "What?" Delphine asked.

            "Feeling really freaked out about stuff," Shay said. "About sex." Delphine nodded at her at this. Shay seemed to read off Delphine that she got it herself. And Delphine thought that Shay must understand Kate's fear of being with her and feel more okay about it for reasons beyond simply liking her more than Cosima did.

            "You used to be different than you are now?" Shay asked Delphine in the least imposing tone that she could manage. Delphine gave her a severe nod and a sound at this. She felt surprised by the question. Shay could see this and did not add anything more.

            "Cosima has never told you much about me?" Delphine asked.

            "No, not really," Shay said. "I figured that stuff was private."

            "What I have with Cosima is completely different than anything before it," Delphine said. "I had never been with a woman, before her." Shay seemed really surprised and also interested to hear this.

            "Was it different in other ways, too?" Shay asked her.

            "Pretty much in every way, really," Delphine said. Shay smiled a bit at this. She seemed thoughtful for a while. Delphine considered how she might explain this to her a bit more.

            "I used to think that sex was a biological imperative, you know?" Delphine said. "An animal desire that you could keep suppressed if you needed to for some reason, but you could never really get rid of it. So you were just better off satisfying it in some way and then moving forward," Delphine said.

            Shay laughed softly after hearing this. She clearly did not relate to these sentiments at all. Delphine took another drink of her wine as she smiled herself. Delphine knew that after her work in holistic healing and somatic therapy that Shay had very elaborate thoughts about human sexuality. But she must not have always had these.

            "What did you think sex was about when you were younger?" Delphine asked Shay. She kept her voice light, so that it was easy for Shay to avoid answering if she did not want to. Shay made a very mildly cynical smile, not really to Delphine.

            "I guess I just thought of sex mostly as a way not to feel like an outsider," Shay said. She seemed thoughtful as she spoke as if she had never explained it this way before. She looked disappointed or concerned by her younger self. "I felt really scared of social exclusion way back then. I didn't start to worry about feeling outside of myself for some years. And then it kind of hit me all at once."

            Shay went quiet for a while. She finished getting their salad together and drained their pasta and tossed it with the sauce she made. They spent a little time getting plates together and sitting themselves down. Delphine could tell that Shay was still thinking from before.

            "Were you close with the men you were with before?" Shay asked. Delphine nearly laughed at this idea. She tried to think of a fair way to answer.

            "I had some kind of connection with all of them, yes. I've never been much of one for strangers, on any occasion," Delphine tried to explain. Shay laughed at this. "But we were not intimate, any of us."

            "I used to be intimate with some guys in my life, but I never was with the ones that I slept with," Shay said. She seemed a bit perplexed by her past self. "It's like I thought it would be too much for me or something."

            "Make you weaker, you mean? Too vulnerable?" Delphine asked. Shay considered this for a long minute. She gave a somewhat stressed smile then.

            "No, I don't think it was that," Shay said. "I almost wish. I honestly think it was more that the more I wanted something, the more scared of it I was back then. Like I couldn't even seem to get with the men I would probably have preferred, much less with any women. My relationship to what I wanted for myself got really mixed up somehow when I was younger. I had to straighten it out to get all gay," Shay joked. Delphine laughed mildly at this. Shay looked over Delphine for a moment. "You seem like someone who always knew what you wanted," Shay said.

            "Maybe in some way, I did," Delphine said. "I was more just suppressed, in my circumstances when I was a younger woman. I was sent up to Catholic boarding school for six years, before university, and my parents did not allow much freedom." Shay seemed amazed at this. She looked over Delphine as if re-reading her history. Delphine did not really mind. "I went up to university, then. Things were much better for me there.

            "I used to have in sex with whomever I wanted in order to prove to myself that I was strong – not vulnerable in regards to sex like a woman is supposed to be according to the broader culture," Delphine said. Shay smiled at that slightly.

            "So why do have sex now?" Shay asked. She seemed like she did not expect an answer.

            "To truly become stronger," Delphine said. "But I guess I had to learn to actually be vulnerable in order to do that." Shay seemed to like this phrase and Delphine's play on words.

            The conversation seemed to turn somewhat within their silence. Delphine got the sense that Shay felt that the focus had lingered too long on Delphine and might feel a bit inquisitive. She was trying to find something more to say about herself.

            "Were your folks religious?" Delphine asked her. Shay shrugged at this.

            "They were standard, Midwestern protestants," Shay said.

            "I don't really know what that means," Delphine said.

            "They were religious in a way, but sort of anxious about it," Shay said. "They kept back away from people, because they were more worried about being polite than anything else. I didn't get much in the way of policing from them or anything. I just didn't get much at all. I guess they sort of left me to fend for myself in regards to sex.

            "That might have been okay for my brothers. I really don’t know. And I guess it could have gone much worse for me. But I didn't learn anything about getting what I wanted while I was living there. It never really even occurred to me that it was even the point of sex," Shay said.

            "What about in the military?" Delphine said. Shay lifted an eyebrow. She shook her head a bit.

            "I couldn't explain that even if I tried," Shay said. She looked over at Delphine. "I had more lovers there, and under more circumstances, often different ones. I got with a few women for the first time, and I knew there was something there for me. But I didn't stay on anything long, then, not even my own thoughts.

            "I think I'm a little slower than most people, in how I move through things in my life, when I keep my own pace. I have to really feel it out first and try a lot of points of entry. I might have even liked the prairie life if I'd been in any motion internally at all," Shay said.

            "You seem very dynamic in your life now," Delphine said. Shay smiled at this. She felt a bit flattered, Delphine could see.

            "I don't do much extra," Shay said. She smiled softly at this. Shay was quiet for a moment. She seemed lost in thought. "You know," Shay said in a lighter tone, "The first time I had sex with a woman, just like this drunken hook up, I actually lay there in bed afterwards and had thoughts about what it would be like going to hell." Shay laughed softly after this and shook her head. "How scary is that?" She lifted her eyebrows at her question. Delphine laughed with her in a deep cynicism.

            "They put that stuff into you," Delphine said. Shay gave an mm-hm to this. "It runs deep." Delphine picked up her glass at that. "To your discipline, then, on that note, and to your future work," Delphine said. Shay smiled at this and seemed moved by the sentiment. She tapped her glass to Delphine's in silence. They ate in silence for a little while after.

            "You think you'll ever be with another woman?" Shay asked Delphine. She seemed like the thought had just occurred to her for the first time. Delphine thought that she would be amazed if Delphine said no. She felt uncertain of her answer actually.

            "I suppose it is possible," Delphine said. She clearly meant alongside her relationship to Cosima. "I have not really imagined it, though." She took a drink as she considered. "It is a bit easier to imagine than my wanting to be with a man again, honestly, especially like I used to. You never know who you're going to meet."

            "That's some truth there," Shay said. "I didn't see this life coming in my own future."

            "I hope that we are not blocking you accidentally from a future relationships with our sexual deviance," Delphine said. She meant it as half a joke and also felt a little serious.

            "I'll be okay," Shay said. She clearly meant this to be taken as serious instead of a joke, and she seemed content in some deep way. "I have a great life. I might want a girlfriend eventually or a partner even. I'd like to learn how to do a relationship like that and grow into it and all. I think that I'd like to live with someone else, someday. But, as you know firsthand, there's really just no sexual partner in the world who is better than Cosima. I'm just entirely sure about that."

            "So am I," Delphine said with conviction. She and Shay shared an almost shy glance and a smile at this. Delphine felt her eyes soften afterwards. It was a unique sort of bond to share with someone, this sharing the same lover.

            "She is just so deeply nice," Shay said, as if she could not find any other way to say it. Delphine laughed at this. She pushed her hair behind her ear and suspected that she was probably blushing a bit from this conversation.

            "That's maybe not the first word I would have chosen, but, yes. You're right. She really is," Delphine said.

            "So damn healthy," Shay said, as she shook her head. Delphine nodded at this. "I think she gave me a new standard for conceptualizing what I was after for myself. Now it's definitely a part of how I understand what we're trying to achieve with my practice."

            "So you'll make us all some more Cosimas through the soft sciences, since hard science has proven that it can't do it?" Delphine joked. Shay laughed fully at this. She seemed shy to Delphine when she laughed hard.

            "Not so much more Cosimas… but in the spirit of it, sure. More women who know and love who they are, and who don’t really experience stress with sex," Shay said. "Or get disoriented by it."

            "She maybe did the one time," Delphine said, meaning herself. "But I blame the situation actually and not the sex."

            "There'll be some external changes demanded, as well, for sure," Shay said. She sat smiling for a moment. "I couldn't really handle two Cosimas," Shay said, "I don't think." Shay was clearly amused by the concept. Delphine found that she couldn't quite wrap her mind around it.

            "No one could," Delphine said, and then added as an afterthought, "Except for maybe Cosima." Shay seemed to find that hilarious, even if she could not find anything else to say about it to further their joke.

            "This is good," Delphine said to affirm that Shay had cooked them a great meal. Shay made a sound of affirmation to show that she agreed. Delphine poured them some more wine.

            Delphine already felt glad that Shay had invited her over. She had not imagined they would talk about these matters tonight. But she felt already much closer to Shay. She knew she would be able to feel differently in the weeks to come. And for now, she just enjoyed spending time with her own good friend.

            She felt almost a little disappointed at the idea that Shay had considered breaking it off with Cosima in the recent past. She would have to make sure that they talked about what the two of them would do with their relationship if that were to happen in the future. She hoped they could maintain some form of connection to each other without such a strong reason between them.


End file.
